Mission Offers Needy A Way To Buy Homes

A non-profit Christian mission that plans to build low-income housing in Orlando will hold community meetings this week to explain the program and seek financial support.

Church members, community associations and others are invited to the meetings scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday at Orlando First United Methodist Church, 124 E. Jackson St. Both meetings will begin at 7:30 p.m.

The ministry hopes to conduct the housing project under the auspices of Habitat for Humanity, an organization that builds low-cost housing with the help of volunteers and needy families. The homes are then sold to the families at no profit.

Habitat was founded 10 years ago in Americus, Ga., and it has 120 housing projects in the United States and programs in 15 countries. Former President Jimmy Carter is active in the program, and he came to Orlando last year to talk about the effort.

Andre McClerklin, a chief organizer of the Orlando Habitat effort, said the organization is trying to drum up community support for the project expected to start later this year.

The Orlando group, which anticipates becoming an official Habitat affiliate in April, counts among its major supporters First United Methodist and First Presbyterian churches, the Christian Service Center and Florida Renaissance, a community-controlled land development corporation.

The Habitat program will be ''able to help people who would never in their lives be able to walk in a bank and get a loan for a house,'' McClerklin said. ''Habitat has the potential to reach people who no other program could reach, people who would not qualify for a loan, the down and out who have some initiative.''

McClerklin, who also is director of

Social Justice Ministry for the Christian Service Center, said a 25-member board of directors has been formed to pinpoint funding sources, identify qualified families, find housing sites and get volunteer building experts.

The board also has set a $100,000-a-year fund-raising goal to sustain the housing project. Nearly $9,000 has been raised so far, but McClerklin said a total of $20,000 is needed to put the project on firm ground.

Most of that money would be used to buy property for the first housing development and to develop site plans, McClerklin said.

He said the organization is considering a lot in the Callahan neighborhood, a predominantly black, low-income area west of downtown where 90 percent of the residents rent from absentee landlords.

McClerklin said the location selected will determine whether the project will involve renovating an existing structure or putting up a new building. The location also will determine whether the project will include single- or multifamily dwellings.

He said Habitat organizers are optimistic that they will be able to break ground on the first project before the end of the year.

The new homes would cost $20,000 to $30,000 and the Habitat organization would hold the mortgages, McClerklin said.